As we continue our Women in Tourism Industry Spotlight series, we hear from Cathy Craig, Commercial Director at Abellio Scotrail and board member of VisitScotland.

Tell us about yourself and what you do
I’m the Commercial Director for Abellio Scotrail and its my role to ensure we are providing value for money travel, inspire customers to travel by rail and to protect our revenue by tackling fraud. We work with many different organisations to promote tourism by rail and have some exciting new products in the pipeline for the coming years

What other projects are you involved in?
I’m a board member for VisitScotland and Argyll and Isles Tourism Co-operative; this is a great opportunity to utilise my commercial experience to promote a country I have completely fallen in love with.

What areas of the industry are you particularly interested in?
Scotland has a great opportunity to provide seamless end to end journeys for visitors whether by train, plane, tram, bus or coach – I’m working with Industry Partners to promote connected journeys and helping to implement smart ticketing which will enable visitors to travel across many types of transport with one smart card. I’d like to see Scotland leading the way for visitor travel with transport providers at the heart of that visitor experience

In your new role as Board Member at VisitScotland, what are your hopes for Scottish tourism in the next five years?
Visitors will always love Scotland, I think our challenge is to provide a consistently good experience from the ticket buying to the travel to the attraction to the accommodation. There are so many excellent tourism providers today, my hope is that we can use them to showcase what good looks like and that others will follow their lead.

What one piece of advice would you give to women starting out in the industry?
Build a good network; the tourism industry in Scotland is a family, your network can help you take a good idea and deliver it.  There are many men and women actively working to provide excellence for visitors and will help you achieve your aims, just remember to support them too when the time comes.